California Board DIY

This morning I decided to get crafty! 

I've been wanting to make this for a while now & I'm so happy I did. The entire thing was very easy to do, didn't take a long time at all & to top it all off, it was super cheap! 

In order to do this, you'll need the following things: 

1. piece of wood  

 2. yarn 

3. nails  

 4. outline of any image

I went to the Lumber Yard off of Laguna Canyon Rd on my way back from the dog park this morning & asked if I could take a piece of scrap wood. The employees were so sweet & let me take whatever I wanted for free! I ended up choosing this dark&sort of rough 2ft by 1ft piece.

I picked up some yarn in my favorite color from Michaels for $2.15

& bought these nails at Lowe's for $1.40

I really recommend using these exact nails, or others like them, because they were super easy to work with & the perfect size. I had more than enough nails to outline California, so unless you're planning on doing a really detailed, or big piece, then this should be enough for you too! 

Printing out an outline of the shape you want would be the best thing to do. But in my case, my piece of wood was too big for regular 8x11 in paper, so I taped two sheets together & sketched the shape by hand. Using the hammer, outline the shape & take the paper off once it's completely outlined.

You can leave as much space in between each nail as you like & even put something inside the shape. I did a heart close to where Orange County would be because that's where the people I love most live. 

Once I put yarn in every direction possible, I brought it back to the point where I started from and tied the 2 ends together 3 times. Then I cut the extra string and tucked the knot under so it's not noticeable. 

The finished product looks like this!! I absolutely love it & I'm so exited to put it in my new apartment once I move down to San Diego in the fall. 

Here's a 6 second recap of what I did. 

Please let me know if you have any questions on how to do this yourself, I'd be more than happy to answer as best as I can. 

Why Tanner is so amazing...

Hi friends! 

Today, Tanner surprised me with a late, all-day birthday celebration! 

This boy knows me so well; he thought of all of my favorite things. 

He brought me a bagel & my favorite smoothie in the morning. 

He then took me to the canyon & we hiked & it was so great!

 Sunday hiking is our tradition; it's our absolute favorite thing to do on Sundays. But unfortunately, due to his knee surgery & recent unexpected surfing accident, we haven't been able to do it in way too long. 

All together our hike was probably around 7 miles.

We went to our spot, Jigiba.

 We went to the spider cave...

 & I was even able to ignore the scary spiders inside long enough to take a picture!

We then made our way to the Dripping Cave. 

An awkward & random Asian man took our picture...

& we carved our initials into the wall.

When we got back to the car, he said, "we're not done." He got out a picnic basket & a blanket & we went to the park! 

We ate, we kissed, we napped, we played with an adorable bulldog & made silly Vines on the swings.

Then he took me home, told me to shower, change & get ready for the next part of the day. 

He picked me up a couple of hours later, drove down to Laguna & we had dinner at my favorite restaurant, Nicks! 

We devoured the garlic-lemon artichoke! 

Tanner ordered the fried chicken, which is our all-time favorite & highly recommend! 

I wanted to try something new & went for the hickory burger.

The weather was perfect, so we decided to go to our spot in the hills of Laguna after dinner. 

We played our favorite game, from which we both walked away as winners. 

The view from our spot is great. We're so incredibly lucky to live here! 

Overall, today was nothing short of amazing.

Tanner always manages to make my day.

I'm a very lucky girl<3

Issues

Hi friends!
Today was hectic. 

As my first official day of summer, I'd hoped that nothing but amazing things would happen today. Buuut, I unfortunately set my hopes a little too high & I had so many issues throughout the day. 

It all started this morning, when I found my adorable puppy scratching like crazy.

Unfortunately, she's very allergic to fleas, & grass, & pollen, & dust, & a whole lot of other crap. Yet again, my poor puppy had chewed & scratched herself raw all over her body & was in so much pain! Thankfully, I work at an animal hospital, so I took her to work with me hoping that the doctor could get her all healed up. 

That's when issue #2 came up: my possible kidney infection. Ugh! I was miserable the entire day at work!! Never have I ever been so glad to see pain pills & antibiotics in my life! I'm hoping that by treating the symptoms early, I'll be able to fight it off & not end up half-dead for a week,
like the last time. 

So back to Lily... On my lunch break I decided to give her a medicated bath to soothe her skin. It was all going well until freaking Tanner texted me "hi." That one word made me take my phone from its's dry & safe place in my purse, to the underwater dangers of the mop water by the bathtub. I don't even know how it happened. One minute it was in my pocket, the next it was sinking to the bottom of the dirty old mop water. Hence issue #3: my water damaged iPhone.

I finished her bath, rushed home & searched everywhere for rice... but of course with my luck, there was none. So there I was, in my kitchen, worried about my stupid phone, when all of the sudden I spotted the tiny bag of brown rice sitting on top of the coffee machine. This little bag was given to me 6 years ago, in the 8th grade, when I finished running the L.A. Marathon.

All these years my mom has refused to let any one of us throw it away; she always said it had a purpose. I always thought she was crazy, but boy was she right! This bag of rice saved my phone! It's been sitting in there all day now & everything except for the home button seems to be working just fine! YAY
The rest of the day was busy with appointments, what seemed to be endless amount of client phone calls, random beeping & slurs from Siri coming from the little bag of rice surrounding my phone.

In the end, I guess it all turned out alright.
& after a long day at work I got to spend time with my most favorite boy!

We ate at a yummy little place called Waba Grill, where we laughed about our day, forgot about the little "issues" & were just happy to be together.
Now that I think about it, maybe it wasn't all that hectic. After all, it was just the first day & things can only go up from here. 

Hello!

Hi friends! For those of you who don't know, my boyfriend, and most importantly best friend, 

Tanner and myself, are in fact those two incredibly good looking people in that picture. 

& before you even ask, no we are not professional models... we're just that good looking. 

After hours and hours of working on everything from projects and ridiculously long essays, to homework and finals, we are happy to say that we survived yet another year of school! 

Tanner & I literally just finished our second year in community college today, and are officially on SUMMER break! 

We are SO excited to finally be done, 

& even more excited to start this blog and document our summer adventures. 

We hope to post a little something everyday & I say "hope" rather than "will," because somedays might just be too busy, or simply too nice to get on the computer.